ThingM LinkM + BlinkM Desk Project!

Mike LaGrasta first posted on Instructables After being given a frosted glass top desk at work, I thought it would be cool to set up some led powered visual notifications. I coded up a crude NodeJS server to listen for incoming events and a Growl “notification style” to send commands to some BlinkM lights.

What I did:
* Crimped the IDC connectors evenly spaced along the ribbon cable
* Plugged in the controller to one end, usb to that, set the led channel ids
* Started up the server software
* Configured Growl (non-mac users will have to find another way to send commands to the server)
* Watched the pretty lights
* Punched some holes in the foam core boards and attached the lights where I wanted with the twist ties
* Strapped the foam core (lights side up) to the bottom of the desk using zip ties around the metal supports

Notes:
* The commands sent to the server are really just web page requests sent to the right port. You could use all kinds of other programs to send those commands such as lwp, wget, etc.
* Growl styles are somewhat limited if you can’t program Cocoa. So I made a “WebKit Style” and set the CSS background image to “http://127.0.0.0:8124/growl”, which is the page request that will tell the server to blink the lights red one time.
* I couldn’t figure out where to buy it, but ThingM has added a WireM kit that would replace my not-quite-correct 5×2 IDC connectors.

blink(1), the USB RGB LED

blink(1) is a super status light. It fits into any USB port on almost every type of computer: Mac, Linux, Windows, Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, WRT router, etc. No drivers needed and APIs in about every language you could want. And it's all open source.
Buy one now!